


You've Got a Friend in Me

by orderlychaos



Category: Marvel (Movies)
Genre: Cupcakes, Friendship, Jasper is Phil's BFF, Jasper's got Phil's back, Sarcasm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2012-10-16
Packaged: 2017-11-16 10:45:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orderlychaos/pseuds/orderlychaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Putting down his pen, Phil resisted the urge to rub wearily at his temples.  Jasper walked over and after he put both cups of coffee down on the desk, sprawled tiredly into the chair opposite Phil’s.  “Do you ever get days where you think you should really just have followed your mother’s advice and become a dentist?” he said.<br/>Phil smiled slightly because right now his sense of humour was the only reason he was hanging onto his sanity.  “Not really,” he said.  “But I do often wonder if nine in the morning is too early for a large glass of scotch.”<br/>Jasper groaned.  “Don’t taunt me like that, Phil. It’s mean.”<br/>Phil paused and eyed Jasper.  “So what have our special snowflakes gone and done now?” he asked.<br/>“You really don’t want me to answer that,” Jasper replied.<br/>Phil sighed.  “Welcome to Friday,” he said dryly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You've Got a Friend in Me

**Author's Note:**

> In honour of Coulson Lives! Also, thank you to dizmo for reading :)
> 
> Warnings for a few swear words.

“Congratulations.  Someone’s officially back from the dead.”

Agent Phil Coulson looked up from the stack of mission reports he was lugging back to his office to sign off on at the sound of a familiar and welcome voice.  Jasper Sitwell was standing in the open doors of the elevator grinning and after the shit-storm of a day Phil had had, the only way the sight could be better was if his best friend had been carrying coffee.  Phil smiled back.  “Well, my paperwork was breeding,” he said.

Jasper chuckled and stepped into the elevator, pressing the button to close the doors before anyone else could spot them.  Phil was grateful for that.  He could happily spend the rest of the week avoiding everybody.  “Phil, you look like shit,” Jasper said bluntly, eying him carefully like he was seconds away from forcibly escorting Phil to medical.

Phil resisted the urge to shift the files in his arms to reach up and rub at his shirt above the scar on his chest.  The scar was mostly healed now and only ached in a dull, ignorable kind of way when he was tired, but the gesture had become a bad habit Phil wasn’t trying to break himself of.  It didn’t help that almost everyone he talked to either stared at the same spot on his chest or tried very hard _not_ to look at it.  “That bad a day, huh?” Jasper said after a moment.

“It could have been worse,” Phil admitted quietly.  “Pepper managed to referee most of Stark’s anger at being kept in the dark, even though she still won’t look me in the face.  And neither of my assets has stopped talking to me, even if the only conversations they have with me now are completely professional and detached.”

“They’ll come round,” Jasper said as the elevator doors opened.  His eyes were sympathetic as they watched Phil.  “It’s just been a hell of a couple of months and they didn’t have their handler to talk to about it.”

Phil winced at the reminder, even though that wasn’t how Jasper had meant it.  Phil was just all too conscious of the price of his recent actions.  He might not have actually expected to survive what he’d believed was a mortal wound from Loki’s spear, but the fact was he had and now he had to deal with it.  He was just as responsible as Fury was for using his death to give the Avengers motivation and they’d made their anger at that perfectly clear by their absence while Phil had been recovering in hospital.  Phil considered himself lucky that he’d got visitors at all after what had happened, but Fury had been in whenever he could, even if it was only to update Phil on what had been happening.  And then there was Jasper, who had answered his questions with, “I’m your best friend, asshole,” and then proceeded to spend most of the month Phil had been conscious and confined to a hospital bed bringing him the most ridiculous gifts he could think of.

“Oh,” Jasper said with another grin as he followed Phil into his office.  “I brought you something to cheer you up.”

Phil looked down as Jasper placed a cupcake down on his desk, right on top of the stack of mission files.  He couldn’t stop the laughter when he saw the cupcake was iced in pink to look like a brain.  “It’s so you don’t eat mine,” Jasper added with another grin.

“Please tell me the junior agents don’t think I’m a zombie,” Phil said.

Jasper smirked.  “Actually, right now, half of them are running two to one odds that you’re actually immortal, Highlander style, while the other half swears you’re an android.”

Phil groaned and looked down at his cupcake, reminding himself that there was still one person at SHIELD who clearly gave a shit whether he was alive or dead and wasn’t currently pissed at him.  “Remind me to schedule more training drills for them, then,” he said.  “They’re clearly not busy enough if they have time to gossip.”

“I did warn them they’d get punished for their lack of creativity,” Jasper replied, making Phil smile.

Carefully moving his cupcake to the side of his desk where he wouldn’t bump it, Phil opened the first file in his stack and almost groaned when he saw three spelling mistakes in the first sentence alone.  “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to help me with these, would you?” he asked Jasper, who didn’t look like he was in any hurry to leave.

“It depends,” Jasper replied.  “What’s in it for me?”

Phil’s reply was interrupted by a rather timid knock on his office door.  With a resigned sigh, Phil fixed a bland expression on his face and turned towards the door.  “Come in,” he called out.

One of the junior agents hesitantly poked his head around the door and swallowed somewhat nervously at the sight of both Jasper and Phil staring at him.  “Ah, sorry to interrupt, sir, but Agent Hill says they have a situation and she needs you and Agent Sitwell in the operations centre.”

“We’ll be right there,” Phil replied, wondering what he was going to have to deal with now, as the junior agent ducked out again.

Jasper looked over and grinned.  “Once more into the breach, dear friend,” he said.

“Shakespeare, really?” Phil said as he stood.

“Hey, don’t knock the bard, Phil,” Jasper said, eyes narrowed.  “Shakespeare is a classic.  Would you prefer I said ‘there is no peace for the wicked’?”

Shaking his head, Phil allowed himself one more shared smile with his best friend.  “Well then,” he said.  “Once more it is.”

 

 

By Friday morning, Phil was regretting the urgency with which he’d wanted to return to work.  Having Tony Stark angry with you was actually more painful that Phil had _ever_ imagined and since Pepper was _also_ still mad at him, he had no one to run interference.  Fury was being Fury and Hill was still attempting to rebuild the Helicarrier with all the new specifications Fury had demanded, so Phil was dealing with half of her workload as well, despite only having half the patience and attention span he usually had.  He was thankful Dr. Banner was happily buried in Stark’s R &D labs and that Thor was still in Asgard, because at least that was two less people to be angry or annoyed with him.

“Knock, knock!” Jasper’s voice called out.  “I bring coffee!”

Looking up from the paperwork strewn over most of his desk, Phil spotted his best friend waiting in the doorway just outside his office.  He was also waving two mugs of coffee.  Jasper looked just as exhausted as Phil felt and he was wearing his Long-Suffering Expression #3 on his face, which meant Phil’s day had probably just gone to hell and it wasn’t even eight in the morning yet.  Phil usually only received that expression when Jasper had had to deal with Tony Stark for an extended period of time without Phil or Captain Rogers to help.  Although, considering Phil had already been in his office for two hours this morning, the expression might solely be directed at him this time.

Putting down his pen, Phil resisted the urge to rub wearily at his temples.  Jasper walked over and after he put both cups of coffee down on the desk, sprawled tiredly into the chair opposite Phil’s.  “Do you ever get days where you think you should really just have followed your mother’s advice and become a dentist?” he said.

Phil smiled slightly because right now his sense of humour was the only reason he was hanging onto his sanity.  “Not really,” he said.  “But I do often wonder if nine in the morning is too early for a large glass of scotch.”

Jasper groaned.  “Don’t taunt me like that, Phil. It’s mean.”

Phil paused and eyed Jasper.  “So what have our special snowflakes gone and done now?” he asked.

“You really don’t want me to answer that,” Jasper replied.

Phil sighed.  “Welcome to Friday,” he said dryly.

“Have you ever considered Tahiti?  We could run away and open a tiki bar.  It’ll be cool,” Jasper grinned.  “I’ll man the bar and you can do the books and we can make all the waitresses wear grass skirts.”

Phil looked up and resisted the urge to roll his eyes.  “Just two problems:  one, why is it that even in our hypothetical tiki bar, I have to be the one to deal with the paperwork?  And two, forcing waitresses to wear grass skirts is both torturous and derogatory.  We should at least make it a voluntary choice.  And make sure some of the waitresses are actually men.”

Jasper arched an eyebrow.  “You just want waiters in grass skirts so you can ogle them from behind your stacks of book-keeping paperwork,” he teased.

Smiling slightly, Phil looked down to stare into the depths of his coffee and felt his subdued mood overtake him again.  All week, his thoughts had barely strayed from Natasha and Clint and their painfully obvious absence in his office.  He missed them both more than he ever thought he would, even though it was no more than he deserved.  “They will come around, Phil,” Jasper told him quietly, voicing the thoughts in Phil’s head.

“I’m not so sure about that,” Phil replied, still staring into his coffee.  “I betrayed their trust, after promising I would never do that.  I lied.  They have a right to be angry with me.”

Jasper snorted.  “You did not lie to them,” he said.  “Fury lied, but we all know he does that.  It’s part of the Director’s charm.”

Phil finally looked up to find Jasper frowning at him.  “I did lie,” he said.  “They thought I was dead and I wasn’t.”

“Oh, for…” Jasper growled.  “That wasn’t you!  That was Fury and everyone with half a brain knows it.  Ah!”  He held up a finger when Phil opened his mouth to protest.  “Did you believe you were actually dying?” he said.

“Well, yes…” Phil said.

“And where you more than a little surprised to wake up in the hospital?” Jasper interrupted.  “And don’t deny it.  I was there.  You were.”

“I was,” Phil found himself admitting.

“Well, there you go then,” Jasper told him.

Phil sighed, but he felt some of his humour returning as his lips twitched into a smile.  “Sometimes I wish you wouldn’t do that,” he said.

“What, use logic?” Jasper said.  “You’re moping and you know how I hate that.  I want my sarcastic best friend back.  You do realize it’s been a whole week and we haven’t even bitched about the new junior agents’ abysmal range scores yet?”

Rolling his eyes, Phil watched Jasper’s expression turn into a smirk.  “Besides, Phil, you’re one of a tiny group of people that has kissed both the Black Widow and Hawkeye and survived the experiences,” he said.  “There’s no way they won’t forgive you.”

Phil arched an eyebrow at him.  “Yes, but in both cases we were maintaining our cover,” he said dryly.  “I hardly think it counts as anything else.”

Jasper rolled his eyes.  “Sure,” he said.  “Keep telling yourself that.”

After a moment of Jasper sitting there smirking at him, Phil narrowed his eyes.  “Did you want something?” he asked.

“I brought you coffee, remember?” Jasper replied.

“What aren’t you telling me?” Phil asked, eyeing the other agent carefully.

“Hey, I’m trying to keep your stress levels down like the doctor told me I should,” Jasper said.  “What kind of best friend would I be if I didn’t do that?”

Phil closed his eyes.  “What did Stark do now?”

“Nothing that bad,” Jasper assured him.  “It’s not like he burnt your effigy in the middle of the conference room or anything.”

“He _what_?” Phil snapped, blinking open his eyes.

Jasper gave him an unimpressed look.  “You know, your sense of humour has really gone downhill since you woke up,” he grumbled.

Giving in, Phil ran a hand over his face.  “What did he do, Jasper?”

“Well, uh, he might have yelled at Fury.  On your behalf.”

“On my behalf?” Phil echoed, blinking in confusion.  “I thought he was mad at me.  And Fury.  And most, if not all, of SHIELD.”

Jasper shrugged.  “If it helps, I think he is still mad at Fury.”

Phil sighed.  “This is one of those days where I should just give up, isn’t it?” he said, his question rhetorical, but Jasper answered anyway.

“Yes, you really should,” he said.  “Then you can come and get brunch with me and we can even expense it if you let me bitch about those range scores.  I mean seriously, this lot can’t even hit the side of a barn if it had a neon yellow target painted on it.  Recruitment standards are really dropping.”

 

 

By the time Phil returned to his office after a leisurely brunch with Jasper, he was feeling much better.  His growing headache had disappeared and he had a fresh cup of coffee from his favourite café rather than the thick, black tar from the break room that one of the junior agents always managed to burn.  However, the discovery of Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, Clint Barton and Natasha Romanov all sitting in his office when he got back did curb Phil’s improving mood.  All four of them had varying degrees of sheepish expressions on their faces, even Stark, and Phil turned to look at Jasper, because this had his best friend’s fingerprints all over it.

Jasper just smirked.  “See?  I told you they’d forgive you,” he said quietly.  “Now go accept what is likely to be a truly horrible apology in Stark’s case and don’t forget to demand lots of presents while they’re all feeling guilty.   See if you can’t get Stark to build us a cappuccino machine for the break room.”

Not for the first time, Phil felt insanely grateful for the sharp-tongued, prickly kid he’d befriended in Army bootcamp.  “I know,” Jasper grinned.  “But what else are best friends for, right?”

He gave Phil a solid push over the threshold into his office.  “Don’t forget the cappuccino machine!” Jasper hissed after him, right before he shut the door.

Looking at the four people gathered in his office, Phil took a deep breath and followed his best friend’s advice.

 

 

As it turned out, Stark _did_  end up building them the cappuccino machine.


End file.
